This Wall Street Journal story seemingly has the goods on Blockbuster’s bid for Circuit City. It has nothing to do with industries or markets or even – gawd forbid – “synergy” or “convergence”, and everything to do with greenmail (Carl Icahn), former video rental execs, and, possibly, real estate.

Phew, that’s a relief. I sure couldn’t see the sense of it from an industry or market perspective. Maybe, just maybe, the physical store plus online store plus digital delivery made sense. But heck, that made sense for Blockbuster. Not for Circuit City. Neither company owns any content or devices. They’re retailers for those, so it has to be a bricks and clicks and digital story. At least that’s what I thought. Silly me.